In 1996, Smith College — an all women’s college that pioneered women’s sports, including holding the first women’s intercollegiate basketball game in 1893 — fired its basketball and soccer coach, Jim Babyak. In December, Babyak was awarded $1.6 million by a jury that agreed with his claims he had been fired because of his sex and age.
Babyak had received good performance evaluations through 1995 and helped build Smith College’s athletics into an extremely successful program. In 1996, when he was fired, the basketball team set a school record for victories and the soccer team won its sixth conference championship.
But Babyak was fired because, he claimed, official at the small college wanted a female coach. The college claimed that he tried to forced his student athletes to give him favorable reviews. He did so, according to the school, buy offering team captain positions to students in exchange for good reviews, and threatening to cancel a trip to San Antonio if his athletes did not give him good reviews.
The college’s case was undermined, however, by the facts. Babyak did not choose team captains, for example, but rather captains were chosen by a vote of the team members. Although the college maintained that Babyak had attempted to manipulate and bribe student athletes at a meeting, they admitted in court that they never even tried to interview an assistant coach and an athletic trainer who were at the meeting in which these untoward events allegedly took place.
Babyak insists that he does not want to become some sort of symbol, nor does he want his case to detract from any of the gains that female athletes have made, but he adds a commonsense bit of advice,
I’m trying to look at the positive side. Women have been struggling for equality for a long time. But once you reach equality, you have to treat people in kind. You can’t treat people as you have been treated in the past.
Source:
Smith bias case brought justice, ex-coach says. Ralph Ranalli, Boston Globe, December 20, 2001.